[1] When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said: "Let us pray". We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. - Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

[2] A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. - Joseph Conrad.

[3] Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal.

[4] Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire.

[5] With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg.

[6] This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - HH the Dalai Lama.

[7] Our prime purpose in life is to help people. And if you can't help them at least don't hurt them. - HH the Dalai Lama.

[8] I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. - Lucille Ball.

[9] The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. - Sir Richard Francis Burton.

[10] I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. - Bertrand Russell.

[11] The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth. - Edith Sitwell.

[12] Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. - Sigmund Freud.

[13] When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" - Quentin Crisp.

[14] There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. - George Bernard Shaw.

[15] I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei.

[16] I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. - Mohandas Gandhi.

[17] I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. - D. Dale Gulledge.

[18] The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window. - Stephen King.

[19] The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one. - George Bernard Shaw.

[20] I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God. - President George Bush.

[21] The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on Christian religion. - Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, sometimes attributed to George Washington.

[22] Atheism is a non-prophet organization. - George Carlin.

[23] People's beliefs are in almost every case gotten at second hand and without examination. - Mark Twain.

[24] We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. - Jonathan Swift.

[25] Religion is the opium of the people. - Karl Marx.

[26] Good is what you like and Evil is what you don't like. - Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan.

[27] I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance. - Christopher Marlowe.

[32] Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca the Younger, 4 bce - 65 ce.

[33] All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few. - Stendhal.

[34] I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins.

[35] You can safely assume that you've created god in your own image when it turns out that god hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott.

[36] It is always best to check the weather report before praying for rain. - Mark Twain.

[37] The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow.

[38] There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works. - Stephen Hawking.

[39] Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us. - John Irving.

[40] The notion that any ancient book could be an infallible guide to living in the present gets my vote for being the most dangerously stupid idea on earth. - Sam Harris.

[41] Faith means not wanting to know what is true. - Friedrich Nietzsche.

Maths and Science

[1] There are 10 types of people in the country - those who understand binary and those who don't. - Jeremy Paxman.

[4] Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever. - Albert Einstein.

[5] It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians. - Henrik Ibsen.

[6] As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. - Albert Einstein.

[7] Trigonometry is a sine of the times. - Author Unknown.

[8] A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it. - Albert Einstein.

[11] When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; the reasons are always different . - George Santayana.

[12] The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw.

[13] It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. - Voltaire.

[14] Be careful while reading health books, you might die of a misprint. - Mark Twain.

[15] The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[16] A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful, than a life spent doing nothing. - George Bernard Shaw.

[17] Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide.

[18] It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. - Camus.

[19] Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. - Marquis de Sade.

[20] An eye for an eye and everyone shall be blind. - Mahatma Gandhi.

[21] Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done. - George Bernard Shaw.

[22] In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George Orwell.

[23] A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. - William James.

[24] It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. - Bertrand Russell.

[25] Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves. - Bertrand Russell.

[26] Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. - HL Mencken.

[27] History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. - Napoleon Bonaparte.

[28] Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. - Oscar Wilde.

[29] Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.

[30] It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others. - Ashleigh Brilliant.

Politics

[1] Since a politician never believes what he is saying, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word. - Charles De Gaulle.

[2] In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant. - Charles De Gaulle.

[3] Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. - Harry S Truman.

[4] It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire.

[5] If the Government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have. - Gerald Ford.

[6] Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. - E. B. White.

[7] It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes. - Attributed to Joseph Stalin.

[8] The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill.

[9] Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. - H. L. Mencken.

[10] Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. - Groucho Marx.

[11] Poetry builds a great truth out of many small lies. Politics builds a great lie out of many small truths. - Paul Lutus.

[12] There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour. - Benjamin Disraeli.

[13] Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power. - Benazir Bhutto.

[14] Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realise it bears a close resemblance to the first. - Ronald Reagan.

[15] Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem. - Ronald Reagan.

[16] A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service. - ex-French premier Georges Pompidou.

[17] Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. - Sir Winston Churchill.

[18] Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell.

[19] The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus.

[20] Great Britain is a republic, with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king. - Historian David Cannadine quoting an unnamed 19th Century American newspaper.

War

[1] War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. - Desiderius Erasmus.

[2] War settles nothing... to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. - Agatha Christie.

[3] I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. - Albert Einstein.

[4] The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. - Solomon Short .

[6] What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

[7] Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. - Bertrand Russell.

[8] The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. - John F. Kennedy.

[9] The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service. - Albert Einstein.

[10] The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. - Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945.

[11] War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell.

[12] Pushing democracy in Iraq by military force is a quaint idea, but it doesn't make sense. - George Soros.